The Burden of Time
by Dantriestobeproductive
Summary: Jack Fenton doesn't expect to meet Phantom after Maddie's burial. Danny...Danny doesn't expect to learn what he does.


This has been rotting in my doc manager for like...more than four months. Oh.

Well, I present you the creepy theory and subsequent fic my mind came up with (probably) a year or two ago. Enjoy.

* * *

><p>The graveyard is silent in the hours after the burial.<p>

A single grave stands, proud and alone in the middle of the field of grass, and the air is quiet, without the chirps of birds or the sound of insects filling the place. In the eerie silence, a man stands, his shadow barely touching the place of rest, shoulders defeated by time and reality and grief. Strikingly old eyes gleam, a light of sorrow carved deep into the young face, and black long hair with a strike of white hides ears and half of the wide, slumped shoulders. His expression is a pained one, haunted eyes and a lowered curve of grim lips, face tight in a way that makes the shadows over it make it seem ancient. But there is no wisdom or power in them, just an achingly deep grief that echoes the memories of other loses, other sorrows. And the man simply stands as blue eyes, fixated in the name written in the grave, glaze in a faraway expression.

"Jack...Fenton?" asks a young voice, and the familiar echo in the voice returns the man to the present, almost like a lull.

"...Phantom," his voice is ragged, but eyes refuse to move away from the grave, uncaring of the ghost's presence (threat) right now.

"Wh-what are you doing...here?" the ghost's voice actually wavers, and Jack's eyes close, engraving the image and words of the gravestone in his mind.

"What are _you_ doing here, Phantom?" he sounds tired, defeated, as body flexes in order to look at the fourteen years old ghost 'hero', his eyes idly fixing in its clothes.

It was always such a weird attire.

The ghost remains silent, but its eyes travel to the grave behind him. There seems to be a flicker of something, but Jack never cared much for reading people, not when his passions and beliefs and the thrill of innovation and creation thrummed in his veins. And right now, he cares even less for what fake emotions a ghost could be feeling.

(He's already done everything he can to protect her, what remains of her.)

Finally, it talks.

"I came to give my respects."

Jack is numbly surprised for a moment as his mind wonders the meaning of those words, if the spirit has come to eat his wife's soul. But then, he reminds himself again that her casket is filled with Blood Blossoms, adorning and protecting what remains of her beautiful body.

She was always beautiful, both in youth and old age.

"Why?" he wonders, as eyes inspect the ghost in a mix confusion and curiosity. "We've been trying to hunt you for the past decades...so why?"

"You were trying to do what was right," then, it frowns. "Mostly," it adds as an afterthought, and Jack's lips curve slightly, remembering when he and Madds would hunt ghosts to study and experiment on, much to the ghost boy's displeasure. "And you weren't so terrible...in the end. You kind of saved me when I most needed it, too...Huh, there are a lot of reasons for me to be here, you know."

"Gratitude? I didn't know ghosts could feel that," his voice easily says, though it only sounds like a far echo of his normal banter, power and joviality all swept with mourn.

"Ghosts feel as much as humans do," Phantom mutters, a faraway gleam shining in its eyes for a moment, "though you never listened. Neither of you did. And there _where_ facts proving it."

He can hear the accusation in his words, and his mind promptly jumps to a particularly messy, troublesome night decades ago. He still remembers the green of ectoplasm splashing the walls, the poor attempts of the blond ghost child at trying to look more human by screaming for its blown arm (alternatively, the scream could have been a reaction triggered by a phantom sensory system, hypotheses they'd been trying out at the time and shamefully had never managed to fully prove or disprove), and the screams and chaos that ensued when the 'ghost hero' suddenly appeared.

"Why didn't you kill us?" he asks, the question returning to his mind as the memories of bright green eyes burns his pupils, the rage and murderous intent clear in them.

(After all, those were the only emotions ghosts could ever really feel, as much as they could 'feel', that is.)

The ghost remains silent, and blue eyes analyse the faraway and slightly haunted look in the eternal boy's eyes, fixed on a spot at the left.

It _does_ remember.

"Why didn't you kill us?" he asks again, and watches as Phantom's eyes slightly jump at his sudden outburst. "We maimed one of your species, but you didn't attack us as you would if it was a ghost harming a human," an old hypotheses graces his mind, and he decides it's as good as any moment to express it. "Double standards?"

The spectre's body instantly tenses, green eyes hardening and expression turning grim. Jack feels impressed at the ghost's ability to act human-like. Maybe, maybe even Maddie would have fallen for it.

"I wasn't pleased, if me destroying your laboratory wasn't a sign clear enough. And I also hacked your information about ghosts," at this, Jack's eyebrows furrow, remembering with a bit of irritation how much of Madds and his' work had been transcribed to the computer archives, and how much had been lost thanks to Phantom's attack. Even after all those years, he still feels like some information is missing. "But I don't hurt humans, Jack. And, if I can, I don't hurt ghosts either. I just...will defend myself if someone, or something, attacks me," it shrugs at the last part, and Jack's mind starts to reel in the meaning of the words, in the question...

_What if _they were wrong?

But his grief stricken mind turns down these thoughts, as he reminds himself how poor decisions a numbed mind can make.

The silence returns to the field, but the ghost twitches, body moving in a show of discomfort, or at least so it makes it seem.

Oh, but Jack doesn't care if it attacks him. Right now, he doesn't care at all, but for his wife, who lies six feet below, inside a casket full of Blood Blossoms, his last present to her.

And to think he forgot all of their anniversaries until now...

"Jack," the echoing voice says, and he can hear the ghost mimicking the action of gulping, "why do you look so young?" the question is full of unease, and his eyes return to the ghost teen, having slipped back to the grave at some point. Phantom really does look troubled, and he supposes that confusion is a normal reaction for an obsessive creature accustomed to the world changing around him, and with it humans.

Is he even human anymore? No, of course he is...

"You and I have been here for a long time, haven't we, Phantom?" green eyes nail into his, an edge of confusion swimming in the green pools that even now eerily reminds him of the Portal. Still, a grim smile appears on his face, and he carries on. "I remember seeing you during Salem's witch trials," eyes open wide in confusion, followed by recognition, and he keeps his voice steady and calm as he talks. "John, Jackson, James, Jacob, Jan, Jackin...you name it, I've called myself with every name beginning with J."

Phantom opens its mouth, and then closes it again. As the ghost gapes, Jack turns to face the grave, keeping his hands from touching the stone and falling apart in front of the spectre behind him.

"B-B-...How?" the echoing voice stutters, and a humorless smile appears on the man's face. Finally, a slightly trembling hand lands above the stone, and his thumb slowly caresses the cold granite.

"It's a long story..." he mutters, muddled memories after all those centuries returning to his mind. "Let's say that messing with a witch wasn't my wisest choice, less if the witch was also a ghost...I've been cursed to live eternally, Phantom, much like a ghost...but without the spooky powers."

The silence returns to the place, and Jack never sees as green eyes turn from baffled to understanding, and then soak in shock, horror and sadness.

He doesn't see Phantom's hand reaching for him, just to stop at mid-action and drop back to its side, shoulders slumping in defeat.

"...How many times?" whispers the echoing voice, and Jack wonders for a moment if he has just imagined it.

But no, Phantom's still there.

"What?" he asks, but something tells him he already know the answer.

He really doesn't want to think about it.

"How many times..." the ghost gulps, the words seeming to choke in its throat. Jack turns around just to give it a funny look, part of him wanting to ask it to stop the acting. "Have you gone through this? To see...to see the people you love grow old and..." Phantom is breathing heavily, as if it was breaking down, and Jack wonders for the thousand time why the ghost likes so much to mimic human behavior.

Strange ghost.

"More than I like."

Phantom looks at him, eyes fixed on his in what, was it a human, he would thought as numb shock. But the ghost doesn't move, and Jack turns away to watch his beloved wife's grave. He keeps like this until night falls and hunger an exhaustion finally make him walk away.

He never realizes when Phantom leaves.


End file.
